


Bark of Wisdom's Tree

by Welfycat



Series: To Field and Hollow [2]
Category: Criminal Minds, Supernatural
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Community: angst_bingo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-09
Updated: 2012-03-09
Packaged: 2017-11-01 17:16:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welfycat/pseuds/Welfycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aaron and Spencer take their relationship to the next level, but Aaron learns that he didn't know Spencer as well as he thought he did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bark of Wisdom's Tree

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Angst Bingo; Prompt: Aphrodisiacs. And for Crimeland's Fiction Challenge.  
> Content Notes: Concerns about the level of consent during a sexual encounter. Discussion of past non-consensual sexual experiences involving drugs. R.  
> Author Notes: This is a Criminal Minds/Supernatural fusion where Hotch and Reid are Hunters instead of FBI agents. Takes place two months after [By Any Other Name](http://archiveofourown.org/works/315310)  
> Thanks so much to [emeraldsnakes](http://emeraldsnakes.livejournal.com/) for all of her help with this fic.

Aaron woke with a start, his body holding still instinctively as his Hunter honed senses swept the room for signs of danger. After a minute he allowed himself the comfort of reaching for the hilt of the knife slipped under his side of the mattress, the hilt of the knife wedged between the mattress and the headboard, and the edge of his gun on the nightstand. All were within easy reach, exactly where he'd placed them the night before, and Aaron let his mind return to what had woke him.

The sound he'd heard in his sleep had been Spencer mumbling as he moved from using Aaron's chest as a pillow and rolled onto his side to curl up further underneath the blankets. Aaron tugged the blanket up so that Spencer's thin shoulder was covered and slipped down further under the blankets himself. He was naked, they both were, though Aaron couldn't remember the last time he'd slept in the nude. It wasn't practical; the last thing Aaron wanted was to be naked with a gun and chasing a demon down the street. He couldn't imagine any scenarios in which that would end well, and in most of them he imagined himself being very awkwardly arrested.

Aaron yawned and spied light spilling in through the edges of the curtains. That meant he had slept through the entire night without waking. He couldn't remember the last time he'd done that either. Last night had been oddly perfect, Spencer laughing and joking with him and Aaron had actually smiled and joked back. Their last hunt had been successful and almost routine. Aaron had gotten them out of the city and down a freeway that he picked on a whim and he'd chosen an exit by asking Spencer to pick a number at random. After a long lecture on how nothing was really random, Spencer had eventually picked a number and they wound up at a motel in time to still get a decent meal at a nearby diner. Aaron was positive that they hadn't been followed. It had been months since he'd realized it, maybe even longer, but Aaron knew that he was being tracked - hunted. He knew this as well as he knew his own name or the dark and steady eyes that stared back at him from the mirror every morning.

After dinner, while they'd both been lounging around on the bed with the tv providing a distraction neither of them were paying any attention to, Aaron had leaned in and kissed Spencer and their night had improved from there. Their stumbling relationship had been a work in progress for two months now, though Aaron was certain that the underlying attraction had been there for much longer. Dating in the conventional sense was impractical; they spent virtually all their time together and Aaron already knew pretty much everything important that he needed to know about Spencer. It was easier, most of the time, to ignore the attraction and work the jobs that took them from place to place. When they did touch, the few times that it wasn't dragging each other from certain death or patching up bloody wounds, Aaron would meet Spencer's eyes and would suddenly be reminded that there was so much more he was missing.

Maybe Aaron was old-fashioned and sentimental, he was about fifteen years older than Spencer even though he tried not to think too much about that, but he couldn't help but think that this, this final sharing of physical intimacy between them, had changed their relationship in a fundamental way. They were no longer two Hunters who had teamed up out of necessity, or friends and colleagues who slept in the same space and occasionally kissed. They'd become something that Aaron didn't even have a name for yet. He wasn't naive enough to believe that they were inseparable, that having shared this moment meant that someday they wouldn't part company if it became necessary, nor that Spencer would feel the same connection. Even marriage wasn't a bond that could make all of those things true. That didn't stop Aaron from imagining that for the time being things would be closer between them and that wasn't something he regretted in the slightest.

The clock on the nightstand caught Aaron's eye and he realized that it was after seven. He and Spencer were usually up well before this, Aaron pushing Spencer to run and train on the occasions when they were physically able, or mired in research on the days that they weren't or when a job took priority. Deciding that they must have been more exhausted than he'd realized, Aaron slowly and silently slipped out of the bed, figuring that he'd let Spencer get the extra sleep while they could afford a down day. There was no telling when one of those would come along again.

Aaron easily made his way to the bathroom, looking over the room once more to assure himself he could spend a minute behind a closed door. He knew that their work made him paranoid, obsessive and occasionally controlling. It was something his brother had told him more than once and Aaron had heard it from anyone who had stayed with him for longer than a single hunt. Even Spencer had said it once, when Aaron had hesitated to let Spencer do an interview on his own. In the end, both Aaron had Spencer had been right: Spencer had gotten the information when Aaron couldn't, and Spencer had nearly died at the knife blade of the local coven who'd seen him talking to the shopkeeper. So Aaron did his best to keep his paranoia and resulting controlling tendencies to a minimum, or at least to where Spencer wouldn't see them so much.

Deciding that they were safe enough that he could leave Spencer asleep and vulnerable, Aaron closed the door to the bathroom and turned on the light. Half a second later he looked down when his foot stepped onto a piece of soft fabric instead of the cold, gritty tiles of the floor. It only took him a moment for Aaron to identify the fabric as the shirt that Spencer was wearing yesterday and he bent down to pick it off the floor with a smile that felt at odds with his muscle memory. He wasn't used to smiling so much and he wasn't sure he wanted to stop. The memory of Spencer coming out of the bathroom, bare from where his pants were slung low over his hips up, kept the smile firmly on Aaron's face until he heard a clatter of something falling from the pocket.

Aaron cast around on the floor for a moment before finding a small, empty glass vial that thankfully hadn't shattered when it had hit the tile. He set the shirt down on the counter as he looked at the vial, a little confused as to why Spencer would have that in his shirt pocket, when he caught the edge of a scent he thought he recognized. Cautiously, hyperaware of the possibility of being drugged by inhalation of old chemical fumes, Aaron brought the vial up near his face and gave an experimental sniff. He stared at the vial, confusion warring with a thin tendril of growing anger.

Barberry bark was a fairly distinctive scent, one that wasn't likely to be mistaken for anything else, particularly when it had been ground into fresh rain water and mixed with darkened rosemary. All of which were ingredients in a variety of love potions, some as mild as basic aphrodisiacs and others so powerful as to induce long term devoted infatuation. Aaron played through the night in his mind, first to make sure that he could clearly remember everything that happened from when they'd walked into the motel room to when he'd fallen to sleep with Spencer skin pressed against his own, and second to try and figure out when Spencer would have had the opportunity to drug him.

The words brought him up short: Spencer had drugged him? It didn't make sense any way that Aaron looked at it. They'd been slowly moving in this direction for two months and Aaron couldn't fathom the idea that Spencer had been drugging him for this long, simply because Aaron would have noticed the side effects by now if it had been a drug that fabricated emotional involvement. All the other potions in that group acted on feelings that already existed and only served to intensify and quicken them. Even though Spencer was the one who was intensely logical and direct, Aaron couldn't figure any logical reason for Spencer to want to drug him.

Even throwing logic and reasoning aside, Aaron knew Spencer. Aaron knew people, instinctively and without question. Aaron's mother had called it a gift, his father had called it a devil's curse, and eventually Aaron had accepted it as a method of survival. For the longest time Aaron hadn't understood that it wasn't something everyone could do. He could watch people and understand what they needed, who they were at their core being, and usually their motivations. It made it easier for him to do what he needed to get his work done, and a Hunter's work was never done, but it had its draw backs as well. Spencer was a little bit like quicksilver; Aaron thought he had a handle on him and then suddenly Spencer was showing him a side he'd never seen before. Aaron liked that, valued that Spencer was multifaceted and brilliant, but he still knew him. Spencer wouldn't drug anyone to have sex with them, it simply wasn't part of who Spencer was. Except Aaron was looking at evidence that Spencer had done that very thing.

Aaron washed his face and went back into the main room, bringing the shirt and the vial with him. It didn't quite seem fair to do this while he was fully dressed and Spencer was naked and half asleep, but Aaron wasn't willing to make himself more vulnerable than he currently felt. There were many emotions that Aaron didn't handle well, but vulnerability was near the top of that list. The sounds of Aaron dressing slowly roused Spencer and by the time Aaron was lacing his boots Spencer was blinking and casting out for his glasses.

Aaron had the decency to wait to speak until Spencer had his glasses on and was sitting up with the sheet gathered in his lap. "Why did you drug me?"

Spencer's mouth dropped open and Aaron was immediately reminded of why exactly Spencer did not excel in situations that required a lot of bluffing and guile. Spencer was good at keeping emotions and thoughts concealed, but only when he was able to prepare in advanced. When Aaron saw that Spencer was about to object, Aaron gently lobbed the glass vial onto the bed. It landed around the vicinity of Spencer's knees.

"I didn't drug you," Spencer said, picking up the vial and rolling it between his fingers.

"Barberry bark. Dark rosemary," Aaron said, knowing he wouldn't need to clarify.

Spencer nodded and considered the vial, his eyes blinking rapidly behind his glasses. "You weren't supposed to find this, except you did so maybe I left it for you to find," he said, seeming to be speaking to himself.

"Spencer. Why did you drug me?" Aaron asked again, failing in his efforts to not show how much this was unsettling him.

"I didn't drug you," Spencer repeated clearly, his gaze coming up to meet Aaron's. "I drugged myself."

Aaron stared, because that at least partially made sense if he didn't think about it too closely. He'd been running through the events of the night over and over and although he'd felt a strong physical attraction to Spencer and experienced pleasure from what they'd done, it had been nothing like being dosed with a barberry bark based potion would have felt like. The memories should have been slightly hazy if pleasant and accompanied by the slight pull of desire for a repeated experience. Barberry bark could be addictive when used several times in close succession and the withdrawals were reported to be rather horrific. "Why?" he asked, trying to not feel grateful that Spencer hadn't drugged him when he'd evidently had the opportunity.

Spencer looked away for a moment, his fingers releasing the vial and watching as it rolled away on the sloping blankets. "When you kissed me and I realized where we were heading last night, I wasn't sure if I could get through it without the potion."

The sharp pain in Aaron's chest caught him off-guard. Somehow those words hurt worse than the thought that Spencer had drugged him. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting Spencer to say but it certainly hadn't been that. Aaron walked from the motel room, feeling pride in the fact that he hadn't done or said anything that he'd have to regret later. His father certainly wouldn't have shown the same restraint, though Aaron generally made it a point to avoid emulating his father in most everything he did, hunting aside.

It was still early enough that the motel parking lot was vacant of other people, though judging from the handful of cars in the lot there wasn't that many people around to begin with. The air was chilly and slightly damp and Aaron shoved his hands deep into his pockets as he realized that while he had a knife strapped at his ankle and his wallet in his back pocket, he was without just about everything else that was important. Some part of him wanted to charge back into the motel room and demand answers, force Spencer to say to him exactly what he meant. Of course, Spencer had already been fairly clear; he found Aaron repulsive enough he needed to drug himself in order to get through sex with him. So much for having a bond of closeness that was cultivated by mutual attraction and maybe even feelings that went deeper than that.

Aaron kicked a rock in the direction of the road and then walked back around the motel so that he was out of sight of anyone's windows and anyone passing by on the road. He was already mostly unarmed and emotionally unsteady without inviting other trouble, though he just dared a demon or otherworldly being to cross his path right then. Aaron was deadly enough with his bare hands, he'd proven that more than once in his life.

"I'm not trying to surprise you so please don't shoot me," Spencer's voice said uncertainly from somewhere behind Aaron. Aaron already had his knife out with the blade pointed in Spencer's direction before Spencer finished speaking.

"If you're trying not to surprise me, that's not really the way to go about it," Aaron said gruffly, including pretty much all of the morning in his meaning and knowing Spencer would get it.

Spencer nodded, his hands still splayed in surrender. "Can I come closer or are you planning on using that? Because I think we both know that if you wanted to kill me and dispose of my body without anyone being the wiser, that would be pretty simple."

Aaron scowled, not liking the reminder that while Spencer was a damned good Hunter in a lot of ways he wasn't physically a match in most situations. Then again, neither was Aaron or any other human Hunter when they were fighting against beings with preternatural strength and speed. He crouched smoothly and replaced the knife in its sheath. "You couldn't give me five minutes to think?"

"Well, it's been closer to twenty five, and I just kind of realized that what I said didn't come out quite right," Spencer said, shoving his own hands in his pockets and shivering visibly.

"Just now?" Aaron asked incredulously.

Spencer nodded. "I didn't intend for it to seem like I didn't want to have sex with you, because I did. I do, I mean. I would like to have sex with you again at some point."

Aaron sighed. He knew Spencer, but that didn't mean he understood him. "If we're going to talk about this so explicitly, let's at least go back inside the motel room," he said, now envisioning getting arrested for public perversion instead of public indecency. 

They walked back to the motel room in silence, Spencer's mouth opening and closing as he thought of something to say and then apparently dismissing it before staring the process all over again. Once the door was safely shut and locked and Aaron had rechecked anywhere someone might have hidden while they were gone, he leaned against the wall and watched as Spencer sat with his hands moving restlessly against his legs.

"Well?" Aaron asked, internally wincing at how pissed off he still sounded.

"Please don't take this the wrong way," Spencer said, shrinking away from Aaron a little when Aaron only raised his eyebrows in response. "I like you, very much. Not just as a friend, and as a fellow Hunter, and as a companion, but in the romantic sense, I guess."

"There's not much to take the wrong way there," Aaron noted when Spencer stopped speaking.

Spencer glanced up, his expression miserable and tight. "It's just, I've never had a sexual experience when I wasn't dosed with the barberry bark, and I wasn't sure I could do it. I didn't make any of the stronger concoctions, nothing blood based, just something mild that would ensure I wouldn't freak out on you or anything. That's it. It wasn't because I didn't want you, quite the contrary."

Aaron stared, his breathing feeling shallow and heavy. "Nothing blood based?" he repeated, all too aware that blood based love potions were the type that created strong feelings of love and devotion where there had been none before.

"No, of course not. I would have needed your blood for that, and while I suppose I had access to it while treating your wounds, I didn't think it would be necessary," Spencer said, the words spilling out over each other.

"But that's what you were used to being on, during your previous sexual experiences?" Aaron asked, careful to repeat Spencer's choice in words.

Spencer nodded and looked away, his eyes focusing on where the wallpaper was peeling in the corner. "I didn't really know what I was doing at the time. It was kind of a messy haze. When I try to remember the specifics, there aren't very many. Just impressions, basic sensory input, that sort of thing."

"How long ago? For how long?" Aaron asked. The slow boiling rage that had first been directed at Spencer was now searching for a new target, one that he would gladly destroy without a second thought.

"Uh, I start having clearer memories about three years ago. I'm not sure for how long. We traveled a lot, I think." Spencer licked his lips and shifted uncomfortably. "If you want me to leave, I understand. I never wanted to take advantage of you, but I can understand if you feel that I did."

Aaron quickly shook his head and joined Spencer on the end of the bed, though not touching him. What had once seemed like powerful yet welcomed contact now felt uncertain and potentially damaging. "I don't want you to leave, not at all," he said, feeling that the words weren't enough, but for once not knowing what to say in order to make anything better.

"We're okay, then?" Spencer asked, one of his hands reaching out with his fingertips just barely skimming the edge of Aaron's hand.

"We're okay," Aaron repeated, taking Spencer's hand in his and not believing a word of it. Maybe he and Spencer as a partnership were okay, but Aaron didn't feel okay and he didn't think Spencer was okay either.


End file.
